


The Truth Dressed Up (In Lies)

by nagi_schwarz



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Police, Faked Suicide, M/M, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21880183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: In which Elizabeth Weir's Violent Crimes rookie detectives learn to work as a team. Featuring undercover dating, coffee-fueled all-nighters, hostage situations, and pounding the pavement.Or:In which Rodney McKay falls in love with his partner, John Sheppard. And it's all John Sheppard's fault.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Comments: 25
Kudos: 86
Collections: Stargate Atlantis Secret Santa 2019





	The Truth Dressed Up (In Lies)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [squidgie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidgie/gifts).



Everything was John Sheppard’s fault. If he weren’t so quiet and aloof and borderline careless about his job, Rodney wouldn’t have tried so hard on their first solo case as partners, wouldn’t have convinced Katie Brown to try to lure her stalker out into the open and trigger him so Rodney and John could get evidence of actionable stalking that he could be arrested and charged for. During the initial witness interview at her apartment, John had listened to her story and told her the truth, that what creepy Peter Kavanagh was doing was, well, creepy but not actually against the law. The best they could do was write up a report and have the information at hand should he actually do something illegal.

John had some beef with Weir, their team leader, and Rodney didn’t know what it was. He didn’t care, because he was going to prove to her that he had what it took to be a detective in the field, not just a genius in the crime lab.

If John hadn’t decided to  _ help _ Rodney by pretending to be Katie’s boyfriend during her meeting with Kavanagh at the cafe, Rodney wouldn’t have lost control of the situation. He’d have been more focused on his analysis of Kavanagh’s online activities and realized sooner that Kavanagh was decompensating, that he was going to escalate his stalking behavior toward Katie. But Rodney couldn’t shake John’s sudden change of heart about wanting to pursue the case, the way he looked with his arm around Katie, handsome and cold and protective all at once. Something about the entire situation had rubbed Rodney wrong, and he’d given up on his analysis too soon, and then he’d left his partner behind on the stakeout, and then -

And then Katie was in the hospital and Weir was shouting at them and Rodney couldn’t take it anymore. Weir was right. He was too arrogant. He wasn’t cut out for being a police detective.

So he’d cut and run, got in his car and drove for hours. Didn’t stop till he was standing on the edge of campus, of the first place that had felt like home, the first place where he’d felt like a  _ person. _

When he got back two days later John was even more icily furious with him for running off without a word, leaving him behind to shoulder Weir’s wrath.

“I was about ready to turn in your resignation letter for you,” John said, his tone dangerously calm, “only then  _ I’d _ have to quit, and I can’t quit.”

He was standing outside the side door to the station, arms crossed over his chest, looking like a rebel bad-boy instead of a detective in his black leather jacket.

“I had some thinking I needed to do,” Rodney said, trying to push past him.

“Would have been nice if you’d done that thinking while we were handling the Brown case.” John caught Rodney’s gaze and held it.

Rodney didn’t have a name for the color of John’s eyes. Right now he’d have picked  _ angry. _

“No one’s perfect,” Rodney said.

“You just needed to be good enough,” John said.

Rodney flinched.

And then Laura was there, clapping Rodney on the shoulder. “Hey, you’re back. Nice to see your bright blue eyes around this joint. You here to stay?”

“Yes,” Rodney said.

“Good.” Carson was on the other side of him, smiling. Then he eyed Laura. “What, my blue eyes aren’t good enough?”

“Never said that.” Laura winked at him.

Rodney shrugged her hand off. “Just date already.”

“Maybe,” Laura drawled. “But hey, we were going to go get lunch. Come with? The diner nearby takes your citrus allergy seriously.”

“You should come too, John,” Carson said.

John looked Rodney up and down. “Should I? Is it a last meal for Rodney? His farewell dinner?”

“No,” Rodney said.

John said to Carson, “I’ll come if you switch partners with me.”

Rodney frowned. “What?”

Laura swatted John lightly on the arm. “Am I chopped liver?”

“If you want me instead, I don’t care,” John said.

Rodney crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m  _ right here.” _

“You weren’t for the last two days, and they both were,” John said. “I prefer consistency.”

“I needed time to think,” Rodney protested.

“You  _ should _ have been thinking when we were on the job,” John said. “If you don’t think, people die.”

Rodney swallowed hard before he managed a rebuttal. “Well, you didn’t answer her when she called you.”

“That was because I listened to you when you said she was safe for the night. Since I  _ shouldn’t _ listen to you, I should be with a partner I can trust.” John’s gaze was steely.

“You can trust me,” Rodney said. “I’ll be right next time.”

“Unfortunately, Katie may not have a next time.”

“John,” Carson said gently, “you heard the surgeon. She’s stable now.’

John started for the door. “I’ll tell Weir you’re back and that I want a different partner.”

Rodney grabbed his wrist. “We  _ both _ screwed up.”

“Then we both should have faced the aftermath,” John snapped.

“What, you couldn’t handle some shouting?” Rodney was incredulous. “Some tough guy you are.”

“Apparently the one who couldn’t handle the shouting was you,” John said.

Rodney could shout at people, but being shouted at always made him remember his parents fighting. Worse than the shouting, though, was the way Katie’s mother kept looking at them while they stood in the doorway of her hospital room.

Rodney shoved him. “Fine. If you don’t want to be partners anymore, I’ll ask Weir for reassignment myself.”

“You do that.” John reached for the door. “Don’t let me stop you. In fact, let me call Weir for you.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and started to dial.

“Hey.” Rodney made a grab for it.

John held it out of reach.

“Hey!” Rodney jumped at him.

John shoved him.

“Hey!” Laura shouted.

Rodney caught John’s wrist to steady himself.

There was a loud, familiar metallic click.

“Hey,” John said, as a handcuff closed over his left wrist.

Before Rodney could blink, Carson snapped the other one over Rodney’s right wrist.

“What the hell?” Rodney demanded.

Carson shrugged. “I’ll unlock you once you make up. Now come on, Laura. I want to try the reuben sandwich.”

“Carson!” John started after them. “Give me your key!”

“Not a chance.”

Rodney yelped when the handcuff dug into his wrist. “Slow down!”

“Laura, get his key,” John said.

She smirked over her shoulder. “Unlike you, I trust my partner.”

“Let’s call Weir and get a spare,” Rodney said.

Laura, grinning, waggled both John and Rodney’s cellphones before she pocketed them. Then she trotted to catch up to Carson, talking about what she wanted to try for lunch.

Rodney and John had no choice but to try to stay with them if they wanted to get uncuffed.

“Do you have a paperclip or something?” John asked as they trotted down the sidewalk, trying to stay close enough for the handcuffs not to hurt but not  _ too _ close, because they didn’t like each other.

“That doesn’t work in real life,” Rodney snapped.

John exhaled long and slow and looked away from Rodney.

The diner was one they went to often because it was close to the station and it served scones that reminded Carson of his childhood, when he’d lived with his grandmother in Scotland.

The only other people in the diner were a four teenage girls and a young man eating by himself. He had several cardboard boxes full of what looked like cans of hairspray around his feet, and a planner opened at his elbow with a date circled.

Today’s date.

It was marked as the anniversary of his mother’s death.

No wonder his shoulders were slumped.

Then Rodney sighed. His mind worked so damn fast, taking in details and analyzing them and synthesizing them. It had made him a phenomenal tech in the crime lab. He’d thought it would make him a great detective. But there was something about  _ people _ that he’d never quite understood.

Carson and Laura picked a table that was angled toward the television so they could watch Judge Judy or whatever vapid daytime show was playing.

John and Rodney sat opposite them. John’s expression was still dangerously blank.

“You have to uncuff us so we can eat,” Rodney said. “John’s fine to eat one-handed, but I’m not left-handed. You know I’m hypoglycemic, so I  _ have _ to eat.”

“You can eat a sandwich one-handed,” Laura said breezily.

Charin, the woman who ran the diner, came over to their table and greeted them with a smile. Carson ordered scones and clotted cream to start, and he and Laura both opted to try the reuben sandwiches. John ordered a turkey sandwich, and Rodney ordered a chicken salad wrap, because if he had to eat left-handed, he figured that would be less messy.

He and John kept their hands below the table, because they didn’t want anyone to see they were cuffed together. Especially since John was looking anywhere but at him.

Laura and Carson were chatting smoothly, like nothing was wrong. They’d gotten along like a house on fire from day one. At first Rodney might have liked to be paired with pretty Laura, but as it turned out she was a former collegiate runner and way into fitness, and she and Carson went running together every morning, as Carson was a former collegiate wrestler and also very much into fitness.

Rodney was pretty sure John also worked out and went running, but he never tried to make Rodney do it with him, and that was fine. Rodney did what he needed to do to maintain his fitness sufficient for law enforcement requirements, but working out wasn’t his hobby like it was for Laura, who was asking Carson about his deadlifting skills.

What was that for, lifting dead bodies?

Would detectives ever have to do that?

The teenage girls at the next table were giggling loudly, and what Rodney really wanted was some peace and quiet, so he grabbed the remote off the table and turned off the TV.

That only made the girls’ giggling seem more noisy.

Rodney glanced at his watch. How long had it been since he’d last eaten? He was probably getting low on blood sugar, which was affecting his mood. Being handcuffed to surly John Sheppard wasn’t helping either.

One of the girls said, “What the hell are these stupid things doing here? Get them out of the way.”

“Miss,” Charin said, “please don’t kick those. But sir, can you please move them aside? So customers don’t trip.”

Rodney glanced over his shoulder and saw the man scooping up the cans of hairspray, movements slow. He seemed exhausted.

Charin flashed the man a brief smile, and then she came over to their table with their sandwiches. Carson thanked her and handed her his card.

“I’ll just pay in advance in case we have to leave suddenly,” he said, and Charin nodded.

She knew they were rookie detectives from the nearby station. “Of course. Thank you.” She ran his card, then brought it back. “I just received a call for a delivery. Can you hold the fort down till I get back?”

“Will do.” Laura grinned at her and waved.

Carson cut open one of the scones and smeared clotted cream on it with a practiced flick of his wrist. He took a bite, and his eyes slid closed.

He was attractive. Maybe Rodney should have partnered with him. He was at least nicer than John, and while he went along with Laura’s workouts, he didn’t seem like he’d nag Rodney into his insane fitness regimen.

“How’s your sandwich?” John asked Laura.

She had a mouthful of food, so she flashed him a thumbs up.

“Hey mister,” one of the teenage girls said, and Rodney, John, and Carson all turned instinctively, but she was talking to the man at the other table. “You heard the old lady. Get your junk out of the way.”

The man sighed.

“Kids these days,” Rodney muttered, wrangling his sandwich wrap with one hand. “They’re so disrespectful.”

“I somehow doubt you were any more respectful to adults when you were their age,” Laura said.

“Well, it’s hard to respect people who are dumber than you, and I wasn’t among my intellectual peers till grad school,” Rodney said.

“We’re all peers here,” Carson said genially.

“You’re all dumber than me. I’m a genius,” Rodney said.

Laura huffed. “And modest.”

“It is what it is. I was born with it. Carson was born with pretty blue eyes and you were born with a pretty smile and I was born with an outstanding intellect. It’s like when people comment about how tall someone is. It’s not a compliment. It’s just stating the obvious.”

“Height, like intelligence, is relative, depending on who you’re with,” John said.

“Geniuses, by definition, are a small minority in the population, so as a general rule no matter who we’re with we’re going to be the smartest ones,” Rodney said.

“Smart at math and science, maybe, but incredibly dumb at people,” John said. “Or did you forget Katie Brown?”

Rodney pressed his lips into a thin line.

“All right. I’ve had it,” a man said, and a girl screamed.

Rodney and John twisted around at the same time, and - oh hell. The man had taken one of the girls hostage, had a knife to her throat.

Rodney’s mind immediately kicked into overdrive. They’d learned the basics of hostage negotiations in the Academy, as being first responders made them more likely to be called on as negotiators. Even if professionals arrived, the hostage taker might refuse to communicate with anyone but the person who’d first spoken to them.

“Everybody, hand over your cell phones. Put them on the counter there.” The hostage-taker lifted his chin to indicate where everyone should surrender their phones.

Rodney had to try his best to prolong the situation. The longer it lasted, the more likely it was to end peacefully. 

Besides Rodney and his team, there were three other teenage girls in addition to the primary hostage. Two of them were crying. The one who wasn’t gathered up their backpacks and put them on the counter. She was shaking, but she was also glaring. Rodney glared at her, tried to get her to back down and not anger the hostage-taker, but she wasn’t looking at him.

It was Laura who surrendered all their cellphones - because she’d already had both John’s and Rodney’s.

“Get on your knees and put your hands up!” the hostage-taker snarled.

He still had one arm locked around the teenage girl’s throat, knife in hand. She was crying.

Rodney had to ensure the safety of the hostages. The best way to do that was to keep things calm. Revealing that he and the other three were detectives wouldn’t keep things calm. They were all in plain clothes, thankfully. The four of them knelt down on the floor near their table without a second thought about their food. The three teenage girls did the same, clustered close together but away from Rodney and his teammates.

Dammit. Rodney and John couldn’t show that they were handcuffed. The hostage-taker would immediately know they were from law enforcement.

The three girls put their hands up over their head, as did Laura and Carson. Rodney raised his free hand, and John did the same.

“Hey!” the hostage-taker snarled, waving his knife in Rodey and John’s direction. “I said put your hands up! You think I’m some kind of joke?”

He was getting volatile. That was the opposite of what they needed. Did he feel weak and powerless? Was that one of the reasons he’d snapped? Would his demands relate to some need to feel empowered?

Only John said, “No. It’s just - we’re celebrating our six-month anniversary. And - and my boyfriend has a weak heart. Please just - just let me hold his hand.”

For one second Rodney was indignant that he was the weak one, but he got with the program fast. “Please,” he said, and snuggled closer to John. 

Because Laura was quick on the uptake, she added, “Coming out was very difficult for them.” 

The hostage-taker eyed them. “Fine,” he said, and Rodney felt a spark of hope.

They had to form a bond with him, get him to see that they understood him but weren’t pushovers, get him to see that they were people and not just bargaining chips.

It would be all over when Charin got back, right?

Only Rodney checked the front door and saw that it was locked. This hostage-taker was working on the fly, but he wasn’t stupid. He was no match for Rodney, but he was also crazy, and crazy could trump smart any day.

When Charin returned from her delivery and saw that the door was locked, she’d call the police. Then Elizabeth would respond and bring SWAT and they would be rescued. 

Rodney and his teammates just had to keep the hostage taker calm till then.

A bunch of cell phones began to ring at the same time.

Carson and Laura nudged each other. Laura craned her neck and managed to glimpse her phone.

_ Weir, _ she mouthed.

John and Carson nodded.

Rodney hoped none of them had put something like  _ Detective Elizabeth Weir _ as her contact name in their phones. He’d just put  _ Weir _ in his.

The hostage taker craned his neck and peered at their phones, straining to keep his hold on the teenage girl at the same time.

“What’s going on?”

Rodney spoke before the others could say something dumb and endanger them all. “We’re on our lunch break. Our boss has probably noticed we didn’t get back in time and is leaving angry voicemails and threatening to fire us.”

Somehow it was the right thing to say. 

“Stupid bosses,” the hostage-taker said. “They don’t get what it’s like for us, do they?”

John must have caught on. “They really don’t. Listen, Bob. Can I call you Bob?”

“Sure.”

John plowed ahead. “We don’t want any trouble, and we don’t want anyone to get hurt. Our boss wouldn’t care if we got hurt anyway. But these girls - their families probably care.”

Rodney squeezed his hand. Good move. 

Bob laughed, the sound broken and unhinged. “Yeah. Families.”

“That’s right, our families,” one of the girls on the floor said. 

Rodney cast her a sharp look, trying to get her to shut up, but she went on.

“Look, you want money? My dad is rich. He’ll pay a hundred grand for me easy. Just let me call him.”

Bob raised his eyebrows. “Really? I’ve been working my ass off trying to move these stupid cans of hairspray for pennies on the dollar and got fired the day I should have been hired full time and now a hundred grand lands in my lap? Ain’t life a bitch.”

The girl nodded. “Yeah. A hundred grand. Let me just call my dad.”

Bob appeared to consider for a moment. Then he brandished his knife in her direction. “No! Shut the hell up.”

The girl in his arms whimpered. But she spoke up. “My dad is rich too. He’d give you - give you five hundred thousand. Please.”

“I said  _ shut up!” _ Bob whipped around - and then he reached out, grabbed a piece of tubing that was coming over the counter, and sliced through it with his knife.

A stench filled the air. 

Rodney recognized the smell immediately. Gas. Carson’s eyes went wide, and Laura wrinkled her nose. John’s jaw tightened. They smelled it as well.

Bob had a lighter in his hand. “If you don’t all shut the hell up and stay the hell shut up, we’re all going out together!”

The girls screamed. The three on the floor clung to each other. The one Bob was holding nearly dragged him down when her knees gave out. He nearly strangled her when he yanked on her by the throat to keep her upright. 

Carson swore in Gaelic. 

And then a familiar voice boomed from outside. “Robert Hansen!” 

“His name really was Bob,” Laura said faintly. 

“I’m Detective Elizabeth Weir with the Colorado Springs Police Department!” She was shouting through a megaphone. “Please pick up the phone.”

The phone on the counter began to ring. 

Bob started at the shrill ringtone, and the girls cried out when his knife swung toward them. 

“You should answer it,” Carson said.

“They just want to distract me so they can send SWAT in,” Bob snapped.

The girl he was holding whimpered when his grip on her tightened.

“Robert, please!” Elizabeth called from outside.

Bob yanked the receiver off the cradle and slammed it back down again, cutting off the ringing.

Laura and John shot each other looks. Were they about to do something dumb? They both seemed to go for violence first, thinking second.

Rodney burst out with, “I’m sorry about your mom!”

Laura and John cast him sharp looks. 

Bob brandished the knife at him. “W-what?”

“Today is the anniversary of her death.”

“How do you  _ know  _ that?”

“I saw it in your planner when I walked past,” Rodney said, which, admittedly, sounded a bit creepy and stalkerish, but he was a genius and highly observant. “Today has been pretty rough, right?”

“What would  _ you _ know about it?” Bob snarled.

Rodney hesitated, because he hated his parents. The slightest wrong move would send Bob even more unhinged and the whole situation would literally go down in flames. Up in smoke. Either way, burning.

John said, “My mom died when I was fifteen.”

Laura and Carson whipped around to look at him. Laura raised her eyebrows at Rodney. He shook his head minutely. He hadn’t known. For all that John talked about himself, he was as likely to have been born in a cabbage patch as have parents.

“For real?” Bob asked.

“Would I make something like that up?” John asked.

Bob looked thoughtful.

John continued. “I know that today you wanted to honor her memory by being hired full time, right? By getting a stable job so you could be safe and secure and she could be at peace, knowing that you’re happy and living a good life.”

John’s grip on Rodney’s hand was painful.

Talking about this was painful to him. But he went on.

“I’m sorry this day has been so terrible for you,” John said. “First her death anniversary, then being fired, then these teenage girls being rude to you.”

One of the girls made a noise of protest, but the other two silenced her.

“Maybe you do get it,” Bob said, and Rodney felt a swell of hope. “But you still have a job and you have a hot boyfriend. My girlfriend dumped me because I lost my job!”

Dammit.

The phone rang again.

Bob picked up and slammed down the receiver again.

One of the girls began to cough.

Laura, Rodney noticed, was looking a little red in the face.

The smell of gas, which had faded to the background of Rodney’s mind when Elizabeth showed up, returned full force.

Carson peered at the girl who was coughing. “I think she has asthma. The gas could kill her if she stays in here too long. Please, Bob -”

“Shut up!” He waved the lighter near the gas hose. “I told you all to shut the hell up! No one listens to me!”

There it was. The root cause of his crazy. 

“Bob,” Rodney said, keeping his voice low and even, “if you answer the phone, they’ll listen to you.”

The one girl started coughing more.

The phone rang again.

Bob shut it down.

Carson said, “She’s going to die.”

“Then you’ll have one less hostage to work with,” Laura said.

Carson elbowed her.

The other two girls started crying again.

“Robert,” Elizabeth called over the megaphone. “Please, pick up the phone.”

The third girl collapsed.

Rodney was having a hard time breathing, and John was also getting red in the face.

Carson was beside the girl in an instant. “Where’s her inhaler?”

Bob shouted.

The girl he was holding screamed.

Carson roared for the inhaler, and the other two girls ran to get the backpacks they’d surrendered to Bob, unzipped all the pockets and turned them upside down and shook them, sending purses and calculators and notebooks clattering to the floor.

One of them grabbed the inhaler and skittered over to Carson, who started to administer it.

Carson said to Bob, “Let the girls go. Keep me as your hostage.”

“Carson,” Laura protested.

“I’ve been a hostage before,” he said.

Bob looked surprised. 

Carson said, “Look, even if these girls’ parents have money, we’re more valuable hostages.”

Rodney said, “Carson, no!”

But Carson said, “We’re police detectives. That woman out there, Elizabeth Weir? She’s our boss. And she’s the best in the business. Whatever you want, she’ll get it for you, but you have to let these girls go. They’re just kids. And if any of them die, you’ll never get what you want.”

“Detectives?” Bob’s voice went shrill.

Rodney sighed and raised his other hand, forcing John’s other hand up with him, showing off the handcuffs.

“All of you?” Bob asked.

John held up his other pair, so Rodney held up his.

Laura said, “They’re wearing mine.”

“Please, Bob,” one of the teenage girls begged.

The phone rang.

“Answer it,” Laura said gently.

Bob put it on speaker. “Detective Weir?”

“Robert Hansen?”

“You can call me Bob. I know that four of my hostages in here are your detectives. I’m keeping them as hostages. But I’m letting the girls go. In exchange, here’s what I want. As soon as I get it, you can get your little flunkies back.”

“Thank you, Bob,” Elizabeth said. “Thank you for being rational and calm.”

Bob hung up on her.

Carson handcuffed himself and surrendered himself to Bob, who pushed the teenage girl free. She ran back to her friends, and they all helped the sick one to her feet before sprinting for the door. It took them a moment to work the lock, but then they were out and crying. 

Bob, with an arm locked around Carson, locked the door, but not before Rodney glimpsed a barricade and police cars and Elizabeth in one of her signature red blouses at the barricade.

The phone rang again.

Bob pounced on it.

“Bob,” Elizabeth said. “The girls made it out here safely. Thank you -”

“I used to work for QueenBee cosmetics. Get the CEO on the phone. I want her to apologize for firing me,” Bob said. “In person.”

An apology sounded a lot less useful than, say, a reinstatement or being hired full time, but Rodney kept his mouth shut.

Bob added, “You have three hours, or this place is gonna blow.”

Rodney was having a hard time breathing. He squeezed John’s hand. John squeezed him back.

“QueenBee Cosmetics. CEO. Apology in person. Three hours. Understood,” Elizabeth said. 

Bob hung up on her. 

“Weir really is the best at what she does,” Laura said. 

“She better be,” Bob said. “Because I busted my ass for an entire year to sell this toxic shit, and what do I get for it? Nothing. Not even a real job. Bill collectors keep calling and my bank account is almost at zero. So what do I have to lose? I’m about to be tossed out on my ass. Either I go out with a bang or I get an apology from the biggest bitch of a queen bee on the planet.”

“Don’t give up,” Carson said, keeping his tone calm and even. “You know, I did wrestling and martial arts when I was a kid. And you know the first thing they teach you? Is how to fall. You have to fall and fall and fall again before you learn even a single basic strike. So maybe that’s where you are right now. You’re in the falling stage. But it’ll get better.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said, nodding at Carson encouragingly and taking up the theme. “It’ll get better. You can’t give up. You have to keep trying.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” John murmured.

Rodney squeezed his hand. “Not helping.”

Bob frowned. “What was that?”

“Sorry,” Rodney said. “John’s just kind of acting weird because of the gas. Lack of oxygen is making it hard for him to think.”

“I’m thinking just fine,” John snapped.

Bob eyed them. “Are you really boyfriends?”

“No,” John said. “We lied. We didn’t want you to know we were cops at first. Needed an excuse to hide the handcuffs. Sorry. But we really are detectives.”

“Then why  _ are _ you handcuffed together?” Bob asked.

“They weren’t getting along, so I cuffed them so they have to stick together till they make up,” Laura said. “They’re partners.”

Rodney was floundering. On the one hand, he really didn’t want to talk about his and John’s issues as working partners. On the other hand, Bob seemed distracted from his own issues because he was curious about them.

“Just police partners,” John said. “Not actual partners. Rodney’s not my type.”

“Because he’s a man?” Bob asked.

“Because he’s a quitter,” John spat. 

He really was red in the face. He almost sounded drunk.

“John,” Rodney began, peering more closely at him. Was he getting the worst of the oxygen deprivation?

“Our first solo case as a pair went bad, and he ran off while I stayed behind and took the heat from our boss,” John said. “He was gone for so long without calling in they nearly fired him. He says he’s a genius, but he’s a  _ coward.” _

“I said I needed some time to think!” Rodney protested.

“You think  _ I _ had nothing to think about? I was holding Katie in my arms as she bled out because we screwed up,” John said. “You ever watched someone die, Rodney? I watched my mom die. She died right in front of me and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Laura and Carson looked horrified.

“So yeah, you had something to think about. And so did I! But I didn’t run away!”

Bob said to Rodney, “You better apologize to him.”

Rodney stared at him. “What? When did this become about me?”

Bob snarled, “Apologize!” He started toward them.

He slipped on a can of hairspray. The can went flying. He started to fall.

Carson grabbed his arm, did some kind of crazy wrestling move, flipped him to the ground.

Laura lunged to her feet and caught the can of hairspray before it could hit the ground and explode and kill them all.

John and Rodney lunged as one, landed on top of Carson and Bob.

Laura, brandishing the can of hairspray, said, “You’re under arrest!”

Two seconds later, the front door shattered, and people spilled through the front door, SWAT members in black tac gear followed by Elizabeth and Teyla in bulletproof vests with pistols at the ready.

“Hey boss,” Laura said. “We got him.”

“I told you they would,” Teyla said. “We were right to have faith.”

“Right.” Elizabeth holstered her weapon and went to help them to their feet. “Good job, kids. Get out there and get checked by the paramedics. I’ll finish what you started. Robert Hansen, you’re under arrest for the kidnapping of four police detectives and four high school girls, destruction of property, terroristic threats, and assault with a deadly weapon. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you -”

One of the SWAT guys hauled Bob to his feet, cuffed him, and frisked him.

Teyla herded Rodney and his teammates toward the door.

“I’m sorry about your mom,” Bob called after them.

John, exhausted, said, “I’m sorry about your mom too.”

Outside, paramedics swarmed them, plopped them on gurneys, tucked blankets around them, hooked them up to oxygen tanks, and took their vitals, asked them questions and shone penlights in their eyes.

Rodney was sitting beside John on one gurney. On the other gurney, Laura was fussing over Carson.

Rodney knew he should apologize, say something like  _ I’m sorry about your mom, I didn’t know. _ But of course he didn’t know, because John never said anything about himself.

What he wanted to say was,  _ Why am I not your type? _

But he said nothing, and after a few minutes, John tossed his mask aside and headed back to the station.

*

Being kidnapped as a team was a turning point for them. It would have broken any other team - and O’Neill, the team leader for Missing Persons, said Weir’s team was cursed just for the sheer number of times Carson had been taken hostage - but Weir’s team of Violent Crimes rookie detectives was an actual  _ team _ now. 

No one talked to John about what he’d admitted about his past and his dead mother, but Carson and Laura definitely seemed to be making an extra effort to include him. Rodney knew it wasn’t pity; John was proud enough that one whiff of pity would have sent him straight to his room without a word after work, but now he’d eat dinner with Rodney and Carson, maybe watch something on TV with them and Laura if she came to hang out in the evenings.

Rodney did feel bad that he’d bailed on John after the fiasco with Katie Brown, so he made an effort to be a better partner. That Katie was healing up well and her stalker had been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law had calmed her mother down (and no wonder John had taken her mother’s anger badly), and John was less pale and pinched around the edges whenever Weir talked about the Brown case. Rodney liked to think that his occasionally asking after John’s well-being had contributed to him looking better. 

_ Good morning. Did you sleep well? _

_ Yes. And you? _

_ Fine, thank you. _

It was a strange little ritual for them in the mornings, utterly banal, but one Rodney had never participated in, not with any previous colleagues or roommates or even his own family. Now John and Rodney had their four-line script that they played out every morning in the kitchen while John brewed coffee and Rodney made breakfast and they waited for Carson to get back from his morning run with Laura.

The three of them ate together, then met up with Laura and headed into work as a team. And they were a team now, not just four people thrown together in reluctant pairs.

Rodney had always relied on caffeine to help him through long stretches of sleep deprivation. When he was a teenager, it had been soda, but now it was coffee. For the most part he liked it sweet, because he was fond of sweet things, but when he really needed to stay awake, he would take it black and bitter.

Which was good, because the coffee in the break room at the station was pretty awful, and Rodney needed to stay up late anyway.

The four of them were working together with Weir and Teyla to try to track down a robber who was lingering outside of apartment buildings, clubbing people over the head, and taking their purses and wallets and valuables and potentially leaving them for dead. By sheer dumb luck, one of the apartments had been across the street from a small business that looked decrepit but had pretty good CCTV set up, and the robber had been caught, very briefly, on camera. The image wasn’t clear enough to identify him, but they could try to track him.

Carson and Laura, being the fitness freaks they were, had gone on foot and walked the area around the crime scene, looking for more places that had security cameras. They’d made notes of all of them within a two-block radius, come back to the station, reported to Teyla and Weir, and then the entire team had gone out with fistfuls of USB memory sticks to request copies of footage, if possible.

Now all they had to do was search through the footage and hope for a glimpse of the robber, see if they could track his movements through the neighborhood, maybe find out where he liked to lay low.

It was mind-numbing work, staring at computer screens for hours. Teyla had departed first, because she was going to watch one of her son’s martial arts demonstrations (the kid was in first grade and already a fierce, tiny ninja, but then Teyla was no joke with her hand-to-hand prowess). Weir had departed second, as she was headed to a law enforcement conference out of town in a couple of days and needed to prepare her keynote address. Laura and Carson, exhausted from their literal pounding of the pavement, had begged off about an hour after Weir, leaving Rodney and John to slowly go blind in blue-scale light.

Rodney reached for his coffee mug, only it was empty. He frowned and looked around, ready to complain, and realized John was gone.

What the hell? Had he abandoned Rodney to look through the footage on his own?

“This is from the coffee shop down the street.” John appeared beside him with a mug in hand. “Refills are cheaper with one of their mugs. If we’re going to be here all night, I figure we deserve the good stuff.”

Rodney accepted the mug and inhaled the scent of good sweet coffee.

“Don’t worry - I dumped in five sugars for you.”

“I’m hypoglycemic,” Rodney protested, but the mug was warm in his hands. “You’re not a completely terrible partner.”

“Thanks,” John drawled, amused, and sat at his desk, which was really the other half of Rodney’s. He plugged another memory stick into his computer and sighed. “This is going to take forever.”

Rodney nodded. “I’ll get the next coffee reload. Just so I can stretch my legs.” The mug John had bought for him had the coffee shop’s logo - a unicursal hexagram, because the place was called Astro Coffee - on one side and was made from some kind of thermally responsive ceramic that changed color when heated. 

“If you like.” John rubbed his eyes. He was pale and washed out in the blue light from the computer screen, but he was still unfairly handsome compared to Rodney. Then he glanced at Rodney. “Hey, you used to work in the crime lab, right?”

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t you just write an algorithm to do the work for us?”

Rodney stared at him. “You want me to write an entire content-based image-retrieval algorithm right now?”

“Would it take longer than searching through all the footage ourselves?” John sipped from his own mug, which matched Rodney’s and was likely to lead to mix-ups in the future. “Or would it be more efficient for you to write the algorithm, set it running, and free us all up to work on other cases?”

“You think I can just whip up a CBIR that includes scale-invariant feature transform, color histograms, and textons at the point, object, and scene level just because you want one?”

“You’re a genius, aren’t you?” John arched an eyebrow.

“I’m a physicist and an electrical engineer, not a magician,” Rodney snapped. Although now that he thought about it, he might be able to modify the one the forensics lab used.

“It was just a thought.” John shrugged and continued staring at CCTV footage.

“I could do it,” Rodney said. “But - some of the math would take me a really long time.”

“I could do the math for you,” John said.

“What, you’d just calculate recursive functions and floating point arithmetic and octal and hexadecimal numbers?” Rodney snorted.

“First, there are online calculators that could help with all that,” John said. “Second, I  _ can _ calculate all those things for you. And third, imagine how impressed Weir would be if you pulled this off?”

“Weir would be incredibly impressed, but - go back to the part where you can just  _ do _ all that math.” Rodney looked at him.

John shrugged. “I majored in applied mathematics.”

“That’s  _ applied _ mathematics,” Rodney said. “What you just described -”

“I was a math major. Math is fun for me. I learned all kinds.”

Rodney squinted at him. “Are you a genius?”

John shrugged again. “Never took an IQ test.”

“Are you in MENSA?”

“No. I mean, I passed the test, but I didn’t join. So are you going to do the algorithm or not?”

Rodney stared at John. John  _ was _ a genius. A math genius. Behind his green eyes was a brilliant mind. He was totally Rodney’s type.

But of course, Rodney wasn’t his.

At least they were partners. Rodney could work with him day in and day out and enjoy the view once in a while.

“I’ll create the algorithm. I can modify the one we use at the crime lab.” Rodney logged into the crime lab portal. They’d let him keep his credentials in the hopes that even after he worked as a detective he’d still help in the lab once in a while. 

John smiled. “Excellent.”

His smile was beautiful.

He stood and stretched. His shirt rode up, revealing a sliver of golden skin. “I’ll go get supplies.”

“Supplies?” Rodney asked.

John ducked into one of the side storerooms and reappeared with a rolling whiteboard and a fistful of colored markers. “Supplies.”

Rodney nodded. He pushed up his sleeves. “Let’s do this.”

He hadn’t felt this buzz of excitement since he was a student, since he and Radek were going head-to-head in the lab, bouncing ideas off of each other and pushing each other further and further till one of them had that blissful eureka moment.

Rodney got the algorithm for the crime lab’s facial recognition software pulled up on his screen. He had to break it down and isolate the elements he needed to modify.

He scribbled the first element onto the whiteboard, then went to peer at the monitor to find the next element. 

“Can you figure it out?” he asked John.

There was no answer.

Rodney glanced over his shoulder, ready to prod John into action, only John was already at the whiteboard with one of the markers, slashing through terms and simplifying them down and rewriting them. 

Apparently John could figure it out. By hand. In his head.

Rodney swallowed hard. As narcissistic as it seemed, he found genius incredibly sexy. And John was definitely some kind of math genius. Maybe he’d never officially been labeled one like Rodney had, had never endured being a social pariah from his age peers and being the object of envy and scorn by his intellectual peers, but he was definitely a genius.

Together, they could do this. They could make this algorithm work, and they would catch that robber, and they would do well for their team.

Rodney’s heart soared. This was why he’d become a scientist and then a detective. Because he loved solving puzzles.

Working with such an attractive, intelligent man was just a bonus.

Really.

But as they worked side-by-side, breaking up and reformatting and stitching the algorithm back together, Rodney couldn’t help but wonder. Could he ever be John’s type? John hadn’t said men weren’t his type, which meant Rodney had a chance. And Rodney wasn’t a quitter, dammit. He had two PhDs to prove it. Only he and John were almost partners, and dating one’s partner was dangerous. If Rodney dated John, he’d lose all objectivity when it came to making decisions about him in the field. He might care too much about John’s safety and not trust John’s competence and fail to apprehend a suspect and people could die as a result.

Rodney sighed and looked back at John, who was standing in front of the whiteboard with one hand in his pocket. His shoulders were relaxed. He had broad shoulders for a man as lean as he was, and narrow, slinky hips. Was John a good dancer? His hips probably looked great when he moved them right.

Who the hell was Rodney kidding? His objectivity when it came to John was already shot.

No matter. They had a job to do, and they would do it. They would  _ win. _ Weir would be proud of them, and they’d contribute to their team’s effectiveness by freeing up people power while the algorithm took care of CCTV footage scans in future cases.

Rodney glanced back at John again.

No. That was playing with fire. Rodney was a physicist. He knew all about being burned.

*

The algorithm worked. They caught the robber. It was a turning point in their functionality and cohesion as a team. Weir was like a proud mother. She invited them all over to her place for a really nice homemade dinner, one that took Rodney’s citrus allergy into account. The food delicious. Rodney was pretty damn proud of himself. And grateful to John, for suggesting the use of an algorithm in the first place.

“This is what being partners is all about,” Weir said. “Trusting each other and working together and using your complementary skills to achieve things greater than one of you alone could achieve.”

Teyla said, not without a hint of amusement, “It was a genius idea.”

Laura laughed so hard she nearly knocked over her wineglass, and Carson had to rescue the basket of rolls before they also became casualties to Laura’s amusement.

“Thank you,” John said to Weir. He still didn’t seem to like her, but at least things between them weren’t as tense as before.

Carson raised his glass. “A toast. To us growing as a team.”

Rodney raised his glass. “To us.” To him and John as a partnership.

The algorithm was a turning point in their relationship, too. Gone was the rote breakfast exchange, the occasional cup of coffee. In their place was friendly morning snark, frequent cups of coffee, the instigation of a running game of Prime/Not Prime, the occasional revelation of John’s further brilliance, and a deepening of Rodney’s longing.

*

“Let’s go over the plan again,” Elizabeth said. “Kolya’s gang are notorious for coming to this restaurant. All you need to do is go in there and get as many pictures of them as you can so we can ID them. That’s all. Don’t engage with them. Don’t accuse them of anything. This is strictly retail.”

“Remind me again why we couldn’t go undercover as wait staff?” Laura asked.

“Because they vet their staff very closely,” Teyla said. “Last-minute staff replacements all at once would be difficult. They only hire other Genii, friends or relatives of active gang members.”

“And why aren’t Laura and I doing this?” Carson asked.

“Same reason neither Teyla nor I have managed to get close,” Elizabeth said. “While there are high-ranking female members of the Genii, like Sora Tyrus, they’re still very conservative in a lot of ways, and the women have their own gathering-place. Which Teyla and I have already surveilled.”

“Couldn’t it be me and Carson? Or Carson and John?” Rodney asked.

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. You and John are partners, so you’re doing this together. Now get in there.”

It shouldn’t have been a big deal, really. Two men going out for a meal at a nice restaurant. It wasn’t like it was a date. They were just coworkers. Coworkers could totally go out to dinner together. Sure they’d dressed up a bit, but -

But John looked gorgeous and Rodney kept finding it hard to breathe.

John looked unfairly calm about the entire situation.

Laura opened the van’s sliding door, and John hopped out, offered Rodney a hand down. Rodney almost accepted it, but then he swatted it away.

“I’m not a girl.”

“I can be polite without being sexist.” John rolled his eyes and headed for the door.

“Good luck!” Carson called after them.

Rodney shot him a sharp look, and the van pulled away, headed around the corner where the others could keep an eye on the establishment without being noticed. Rodney followed John into the restaurant, smoothing down his shirt absently. They were both dressed nice, too nice to be made as cops, or so Laura said (she’d picked their outfits). 

“What’s your plan?” Rodney asked as he headed into the foyer.

“Order food, dig out our phones, pretend to play some kind of game against each other, snap some photos on the downlow.” John lingered near the door so the host at the host stand wouldn’t overhear them.

“What game?” Rodney asked.

“Something simple, like that virtual scrabble game,” John said. “Do you have it on your phone?”

“No, but me downloading it would give me an extra excuse to be dinking around on my phone.” Rodney considered. “You?”

“I downloaded it already.”

Rodney’s mind spun. If John already had it, he could walk Rodney through the process, which would give Rodney the opportunity to sit beside him for a moment, change the angle of his seat so he could cover as much as the restaurant as possible. Of course, they had little control over where they were seated, but having an excuse to move around was a good idea.

John headed for the host stand and asked the young man - tall, pale, gangly, with curly red-brown hair that marked him as possibly related to Cowan, one of the Genii leaders who was rumored to be one of Kolya’s close allies - for a table for two. The man nodded, grabbed two menus, and led them into the restaurant. There was no option of a booth versus a table, because there were only tables.

Rodney scanned the layout, noted that there was a concentration of men in cheap suits near the back wall, so he didn’t ask to be seated by a window, was pleased when the host led them to a table close to the middle of the restaurant.

“Thank you,” John said. He pulled out Rodney’s chair.

Rodney had to remind himself: this wasn’t a date. Not that Rodney had ever had a date be as polite to him as John was being. But Rodney didn’t complain this time, because he didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to himself and John.

“Your server will be with you in just a moment,” the host said. “Would you like anything to drink?”

“Water, please, no ice for me, completely citrus-free for him,” John said. “He has a severe allergy.”

“Of course,” the host said, and hurried away.

“What if I wanted something else, like a beer?” Rodney asked.

John raised his eyebrows. Right. They were on duty. 

“I can still talk for myself,” Rodney said.

“Just trying to keep things expeditious and interpersonal contact with the staff to a minimum so we’re not memorable to them,” John said in a low voice, too low for anyone at nearby tables to overhear.

Rodney knew he had a loud voice, and he winced. Then he said, “So, show me where to download this game, and let’s play. I play to win, just so you know.”

“I’m not very competitive,” John drawled, but something about the heat in his gaze made Rodney think he wasn’t being entirely truthful. John reached into his pocket for his phone, rested his elbows on the table, and unlocked it.

“No elbows on the table,” Rodney said. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that?” Too late, he remembered what John had said during the hostage situation at Charin’s diner, and he shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.

“If I have my elbows on the table it’s less obvious that I’m taking pictures,” John murmured, almost too low for Rodney to hear. “Now come here.”

Rodney unlocked his phone and scooted his chair around the table slowly, sneaking photos as he went. He knew most of them wouldn’t turn out great but he figured at least some of them would be useful. He sat down beside John and was startled when John’s elbow brushed his. But then he remembered why John had his elbows on the table in a nice restaurant and he assumed a similar pose, leaned in to keep his voice low. 

“Am I really putting this stupid game on my phone?”

“You know the rules of being undercover. Have to make it real and believable,” John said. He leaned in closer, and Rodney was starkly aware of how warm he was. “Okay, so you open up this app here.” He tapped his screen to demonstrate. Luckily their work phones were the same brand.

Rodney rolled his eyes. “Look, I actually know how to download games on my phone. I’m a scientist and a genius. Just tell me the name of the game and show me what the icon looks like so I can be sure I don’t download the wrong thing on my work phone.” 

“No harm in slowing down the process and taking more pictures.” But John showed Rodney his phone, pointed out the app and its name.

While Rodney poked through the app store and typed very slowly (he was fast at typing on a computer keyboard when it mattered), John leaned in and looked over his shoulder. To all appearances he was just holding his phone, but Rodney could see he had his camera on and was tapping the take-a-picture button with his thumb, the motion subtle. How many pictures had he taken?

Eventually the game finished downloading, and John continued to silently take pictures while Rodney talked his way through picking a username and starting a game against John. He did start an actual game, then switched over to the camera app and tried to think of a subtle way to get a good picture-taking angle.

A waiter arrived with their drinks, and Rodney put his phone to sleep, hoping it seemed like he was being polite and attentive instead of like he was hiding something. 

“Are you ready to order, or do you need a few more minutes?”

Neither of them had even looked at the menus, so Rodney was surprised when John said, “I know what I want, but what on the menu besides the Salisbury steak is citrus-free? Given his allergy.”

The waiter frowned and flipped open the menu, scanned it. “You know, I know which dishes don’t mention any citrus ingredients, but I’d better check to be sure, if you don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” John said. “Anything for his safety.”

The waiter nodded and ducked away. As soon as his back was turned, John flipped open the menu.

Rodney stared at him, then opened his own menu. “I’m both appalled and impressed at how good a liar you are.”

“It’s a useful skill in the field,” John said loftily. “But I do know what I want. I checked out the menu online before we came.”

That was actually a smart thing to do. Rodney should have done the same. Hastily he flipped open the menu and started scanning, but he couldn’t really pick till he knew what wouldn’t poison him. While Rodney was looking at the menu, John was seemingly playing on his phone, but Rodney was sure he was taking more photos. 

Eventually Rodney tentatively settled on a dish, and he sat back, sipped his water, and also pretended to play on his phone. He was trying to figure out a subtle way to get the angle he needed when his stomach rumbled. 

John looked at him. “Have you eaten today? You’re hypoglycemic.”

“I had something small,” Rodney began, then frowned. “How do you know I’m hypoglycemic?”

“Same way I know about your citrus allergy. You always mention it.”

“Not always,” Rodney protested, then remembered he was supposed to keep his voice low and try to be inconspicuous. “Shouldn’t the waiter be back by now?”

At that, John straightened up. He went to pocket his cellphone, and Rodney realized what he was thinking. They’d been made. They’d have to run. 

But then Rodney saw the waiter. “Oh. There he is. It’s fine.”

John relaxed fractionally, turned to look at the waiter. “No wonder he took so long. That’s a lot of candles on that cake. Someone’s birthday?” He added, in a lower voice, “We should definitely take a picture of whoever he gives that cake to. A birthday will expedite identifying the guy.”

Rodney nodded and readied his camera.

And then the waiter, beaming, placed the cake down in front of him. “Congratulations!”

Rodney stared. “It’s not my birthday.”

And then he looked at the writing decorating the cake.

_ Happy First Anniversary Rodney & John! _

John spotted the pretty curly frosting cursive at the same time.

Rodney looked up at John. “Did you do this?” he hissed. He remembered John lying to Bob the hostage-taker, saying they were a couple.

John shook his head minutely, swallowed hard, but he managed a passably sweet smile. “You forgot what day it was today, didn’t you? I didn’t ask you to dinner for no reason. Surprise.”

Rodney was surprised all right. And furious. But he was also a professional, and they had to maintain their cover. He tried for a smile. “Thanks. You know how absent-minded I am. I’m sorry I forgot. I didn’t do anything for you.”

“It’s fine,” John said. “You being here is enough.”

No one had ever said that to Rodney before. Of course the first time he was hearing it, it was fake.

John smiled and said, “Hey, smile. Before we blow the candles out.” And he held up his phone.

Right. Phone. Pictures. To identify the members of the Genii crime syndicate who were pretty much all the other diners in the restaurant.

Rodney leaned closer to the cake and smiled. John rose and circled around the table to crouch beside him.

“Now both of us together.”

“Wait,” Rodney said. “This is a better angle.” And he shifted a bit so they could photograph people who weren’t just directly behind their table.

It was genius, so they had a bit of a photoshoot with each other, then with the cake, and then the waiter took pictures of them blowing out the candles together.

“The cake is entirely citrus-free,” the waiter promised, and he held out a knife for John to slice the cake.

Rodney was still jittery with adrenaline at their cover taking a very strange turn, but it was all downhill from here. They could eat cake, have a nice meal, and then hightail it out to the van to deliver the pictures. And then he would murder whoever had come up with this very conspicuous pretext.

Although none of the Genii men seemed all that awkward about John and Rodney allegedly celebrating their one-year anniversary. Rodney hoped they were busy with their gangster business and not paying attention to anyone else in the restaurant. 

He turned to the waiter. “We probably won’t be able to finish this all ourselves in one sitting. Could you box it up for us?”

The waiter nodded. “Absolutely, sir.”

John went to cut a slice of the cake, and someone shouted, “Kiss!”

Rodney started and twisted around in his seat. All of the Genii men in their cheap suits were looking at him and John and smiling. Not maliciously. One man even raised a glass and nodded encouragingly.

Someone else picked up the cry. “Kiss!”

What was this, middle school? 

Only more and more men picked up the chant.

Rodney looked at John. John looked at Rodney. A real couple would have no trouble kissing in a fancy restaurant on their one-year anniversary.

John stood, offered Rodney his hand. Rodney stood. John reeled him in close. Rodney’s heart started to pound. Sure, John was good-looking, and smarter than Rodney cared to admit, and he’d kept a cool head during that hostage incident, but he was also taciturn and sarcastic in turns.

John leaned in and kissed him.

The moment was brief. John’s mouth was firm and warm. Rodney remembered to close his eyes a moment too late.

Cheers erupted around them.

Rodney opened his eyes and pulled back a smidge, looked into John’s eyes, desperately trying to communicate partner-to-partner.  _ Was that good enough? Have we maintained our cover? _

John was staring at him, eyes wide, breathing hard. 

Rodney panicked internally. Maybe he wasn’t actually into men at all?

Only John curled a hand around the back of Rodney’s neck, settled his other hand on Rodney’s hip, and leaned in again.

Oh. This.  _ This  _ was how Rodney had always dreamed of being kissed, soft and slow and thorough, gentle but passionate and intently and -

John yanked himself backward.

Rodney wanted to say,  _ What the hell?  _

But then there was applause and cheering, and Rodney and John were being pulled toward the crowd of very cheerful, kind, accepting Genii gangsters and getting their picture taken with the group - perfect pictures of each of their faces, so useful for their case - and the rest of the meal was a blur.

When all was said and done - the waiter said someone had paid for their meal for them - John and Rodney stumbled out of the restaurant, boxed-up cake in hand, and headed around the corner for the van. They walked close but without touching, and they didn’t dare look at each other, or look back at the restaurant.

As soon as they were in the van, Laura asked, “How was the cake?”

John shoved the box at her. “See for yourself.”

“Whose idea was that?” Rodney demanded.

“All of ours,” Carson said.

John cast Weir a betrayed look. “You couldn’t have warned us beforehand?”

“I know you both improvise well,” she said. “I didn’t want you to be nervous and overthink it all.”

“Cowan’s nephew is gay,” Teyla said, “and the restaurant is a safe space. You got good pictures, yes?”

Rodney handed his work phone to her. “Really good pictures. Enjoy.”

Weir started the engine and drove back to the station. “Let’s get them to the crime lab and have them start on facial recognition. Take the rest of the night off.”

John nodded stiffly, looking out the window.

“Let’s go get dinner,” Laura said to Carson. “Unlike some people, we didn’t get a fancy anniversary meal.”

“You got leftover cake,” Rodney said.

Back at the station, John and Rodney sat at their computers and uploaded all the photos they’d taken. 

Then they headed for the parking lot and their respective cars, because they drove to the station separately every morning even though they all lived in the same apartment.

Rodney reached out, caught John’s wrist before he could unlock his fancy black muscle car.

“That kiss,” he said. “Did you mean it?”

John glanced at him. His expression was casual, but his shoulders were tense. “What? Of course not. It was just to maintain the pretext. All business.”

“It didn’t feel like it was just business.” Rodney caught John’s gaze and held it.

John slipped out of his grasp. “Well, it was. See you later.” He unlocked his car, slid behind the wheel, and shut the door before Rodney could any anything more.

Rodney watched him peel out of the parking lot at a speed unbefitting a law enforcement officer. He said, mostly to himself, “Liar.”

*

Everything was John Sheppard’s fault. If he hadn’t been so damn handsome (okay, that was his parents’ fault) and smart (also at least partially his parents’ fault) and kissed Rodney like that, Rodney wouldn’t be going crazy like this.

Rodney’s heart wouldn’t skip a beat every time John looked at him. Rodney wouldn’t feel stupidly warm and pleased whenever he could feel John’s warmth beside him while they sat at the cramped table in Weir’s team office for a new case briefing. Rodney wouldn’t find himself staring at John’s mouth over and over again and wondering what another kiss would feel like. 

Rodney wouldn’t miss the coffee John brought him, or playing Prime/Not Prime, or the weirdly awkward breakfast conversation they used to have.

Rodney had never missed someone and been starkly aware of them at the same time. But he missed John and the comfortable relationship they’d started to develop. And he wanted to shake John, because he was sure the man was a liar.

No way was that kiss just business.

Weir stepped into the team office with a stack of old brown casefiles in her arms. “This is everything I have on the Amelia Monroe murder case.”

Carson raised his eyebrows. “Your first unsolved case.”

“It’s a cold case,” Rodney said, but he helped her lower the files onto the table. “Why are you showing us this now?”

“Because,” Weir said, “I finally got a new lead, and I need your help.”

The new lead was a tiny scrap of paper that had been tucked into an old casefile, a handwritten scrawled note, a description of the man who might have murdered Amelia Monroe: a man with a black tattoo on his face.

“Face tattoos are pretty rare,” Laura said. She nudged Rodney. “Can you program your shiny algorithm to find us images of face tattoos?”

“It would save us hours and hours of combing through mugshots by hand,” Carson added.

Rodney nodded. “Sure.”

Weir assigned Teyla to go track down the original detectives on the case besides Weir, see if any of them remembered who’d written the note or taken the statement. The note had no context, no indication of how the information had come to light. She told Rodney to go ahead with tweaking his algorithm to sort through the digital mugshot database and find all known suspects with face tattoos. Carson and Laura were dispatched to interview some of Amelia Monroe’s old friends and see if any of them knew of someone who had a face tattoo. Weir assigned John to go to Amelia Monroe’s former place of employment and ask if any of them were aware of a male with a face tattoo who might have had a connection to the victim or was even just spotted around her.

Amelia Monroe had been a nurse at a local high school, had been murdered brutally in her home. Her fifteen-year-old son had found her body and called the police, but he’d gone missing in the aftermath of the investigation. 

“Weir thinks the boy was killed because he was a witness, knew more than he realized,” Rodney said in a low voice. He was loading up on coffee and stretching his wrists before he got cracking at his computer.

“It’s a good thing we got assigned the hospital where she used to work,” Carson said.

“Why?” Laura asked.

Carson shrugged on his jacket. “I know people there.”

Laura laughed and patted his shoulder. “Because you’re just that accident-prone?

Carson shook his head, amused. “No. Didn’t I tell you? I did my residency there. I didn’t end up staying in medicine, but -”

Rodney twisted around to look at him. “You’re an MD?”

Carson nodded. 

Laura gaped. “No way!”

“That was how you knew the girl at the restaurant during that hostage situation had asthma, right?” John asked.

Carson nodded.

“Why are you a detective when you could be a doctor?” Rodney asked. “Not that medicine is the same as physics or engineering.”

“Ken Jeong is a comedian and actor, and I’m a detective.” Carson shrugged. “Come on, Laura. Let’s see if my connections are still any good.”

She nodded and followed him out of the station, still wide-eyed.

Rodney stared after him. “A medical doctor? Really?”

“I’m sure Weir and Teyla already knew.” John patted himself down, made sure he had his wallet, keys, credentials, and sidearm.

“Did you?” Rodney turned to look at him.

John shook his head.

Rodney eyed him. “You don’t have any secrets like that, do you? Secrets your partner should know.”

John glanced at him. “If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets anymore.” And he smiled, his sly old smirk, one Rodney hadn’t seen since -

Since the kiss at the restaurant.

John offered a sloppy salute and strode out of the station.

Rodney went to his desk to fire up his laptop and get to reconfiguring his facial recognition algorithm. Face tattoos. That wasn’t a lot to go on. They’d get scars and weird shadows in the mix. But Carson was right - it would still be faster than checking mugshots by hand. At least the mugshot database was mostly digitized. Of course, the Amelia Monroe case was ten years old. Would all the mugshots from back then have been digitized?

Rodney fired off an email to the records department to ask, then continued working. While John was out in the field, Rodney had to work with an online scientific calculator to get some of the components of the algorithm recalculated. Working with John would have been faster. 

He was startled out of his rapid typing when a girl said,

“Delivery for Detective McKay?”

Rodney lifted his head, expecting a parcel service employee in an ugly uniform, but instead it was a teenage girl in a cute apron. She was holding a little cardboard box. 

He raised his hand. “I’m Detective McKay.”

She wove through the desks in the middle of the bullpen and placed the box on his desk. “Sugary coffee and citrus-free pastries,” she said. She held out a little clipboard. “Please sign.”

Rodney scanned the clipboard. “I didn’t order anything.”

“It’s already been paid for.” The girl smiled.

“Who ordered it?” Rodney didn’t recognize the name of the eating establishment she was from. Even though Rodney had only been a detective for a short while, he’d been with the crime lab for a long while, and plenty of criminals had reason to wish him harm.

The girl squinted at the receipt on the clipboard. “A...Detective John Sheppard?”

“Oh.” Rodney accepted the pen and signed. “Thank you.” He handed the girl a crumpled fiver as a tip.

She beamed at him and left.

Rodney curled his hands around the warm cup of coffee. Coffee and snacks during programming and calculating. It felt like old times, like before The Kiss. Rodney took a few minutes to enjoy one of the pastries and the coffee, and then he got back to work.

By the time the pastries were all done, Rodney’s wrists were sore and his eyes were dry from staring at a computer screen for too long, but the algorithm was sorted, and it had taken a lot less time than the original reconfiguration had. Rodney pressed  _ enter _ a final time to save and upload the altered algorithm, and he sat back, rubbed his eyes.

An electronic pinging sound made him open his eyes.

He’d finally received a reply from Records. There was a box of mugshots that hadn’t been scanned into the database. It wasn’t a priority right now.

Rodney groaned.

“Coffee will make everything better,” John said.

Rodney yelped and almost fell out of his chair.

John raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. He had a mug of coffee in each hand. “I’m your partner, not a robber.”

“Don’t sneak up on people like that!” Rodney righted himself, smoothed down his shirt. His heart was pounding, and not just because John looked damn good in that leather jacket.

“I wasn’t sneaking.” John set one of the coffee mugs on Rodney’s desk. “You were just very absorbed in your work.” He leaned in, peered at Rodney’s computer monitor.

Rodney took a sip of the coffee and tried to ignore the subtle but magnetic scent of John’s cologne, his subtle warmth because he was so close to Rodney. “I was adjusting the algorithm to find mugshots with face tattoos.”

“Was? You got it done?” John straightened up. His expression was strangely intense in the harsh blue glow from the monitor. “Then we’re speeding our way toward an ID on face tattoo guy?”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” Rodney said. “Because there’s an entire box of mugshots that hasn’t been scanned into the database.”

John raised his eyebrows. “Where’s that box now?”

“Up in Records.” Rodney drained the coffee mug, then gazed sadly into its empty depths.

John shrugged off his jacket, hung his jacket on the back of his chair. “I’ll go get it.”

“Right now?”

John nodded. “I’ll help you scan them in. If you grab a couple of scanners, we can get it done faster.”

“You’re just like Weir. All this unnatural enthusiasm over a cold case.” But Rodney pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll come with you. I’m sure Records will let us use their scanners since we’re doing their job for them.”

They rode the elevator up to Records, which was on the top floor, right next to Dispatch. Apparently after a bad basement flood, in which a lot of records were destroyed, the archives were moved somewhere they were less likely to get flooded.

“So what did you get from the school where the vic worked before she died?” Rodney asked.

An unreadable expression crossed John’s face for a moment, so fast Rodney thought he imagined it, because John just shrugged. “The usual: she was nice but quiet so they didn’t know much about her. Never seen a guy with a face tattoo in real life.”

“You’d think people in small towns would be nosier about each other’s business,” Rodney said. “Oh well.”

“A face tattoo is pretty distinct,” John said. “They’d have remembered if they saw it.”

Rodney nodded. “And that’s why we’re going to scan all the mugshots we can. Of course, a perp could have gotten his face tattooed after his mugshot was taken. Or had it removed after.”

“Tattoo removal scars on his face would be memorable too,” John said.

The elevator doors slid open. The skinny little guy with the fuzzy brown hair who manned the Records desk was leaning back in his chair, feet kicked up on his desk, looking terribly slovenly for a uniformed officer of the law. He was reading a copy of Slavoj Zizek’s _ Welcome to the Desert of the Real,  _ which was kind of heavy reading for a bottom-rung admin guy.

John said, “Hey, Chuck.”

The guy looked up and closed his book. “Sheppard. McKay. What brings you to Records at this time of night?”

“We’re here to do you a favor,” John said.

“Oh?” Chuck raised his eyebrows and sat up straighter.

“About the email I sent you, regarding the backlog of mugshots that still need to be digitized -” Rodney began.

“Let us borrow a couple of your scanners and we’ll get the rest of them scanned in,” John said. “It’ll help us with a case, and it’ll help you too.”

Chuck nodded, rose, tucked in his uniform shirt a bit more neatly. Why would he need to have his sidearm in this attic?

“Sure thing,” he said. He turned and called over his shoulder, “Banks, can you give me a hand?”

Rodney sighed. “I had a handle on it.”

John smirked. “Oh yeah? What’s Banks’s first name?”

Rodney thought fast. “Uh - Bob. His name is Bob.”

“Actually,” she said, “it’s Amelia. Hi again, Detective McKay.”

Amelia Banks was tall and had big biceps and looked like she could knock Rodney out with one punch. Then she smiled at John the way all remotely straight women did and said, “What did you need?”

“Sheppard and McKay are going to help us with the backlog of mugshots that need scanning,” Chuck said. “They need our scanners.”

Banks nodded. “Sure thing. We’ll bring the pictures and scanners up to the bullpen.”

“Thanks.” John offered both of them sloppy salutes, and then he headed back to the elevator, Rodney in tow.

“Okay fine, you have superior people skills.” Rodney jabbed the button for the ground floor where the Violent Crimes bullpen was.

“I don’t get you sometimes,” John said. “We walk into a deli and you notice the date of a guy’s mother’s death anniversary in his planner but we go to Records multiple times a day and you don’t notice Banks is a woman.”

“I’m a genius. I’m good at  _ things, _ not people. The planner was a  _ thing. _ The person who connected with that crazy man was you,” Rodney protested, and then he cut himself off, because John and Bob the hostage taker had connected over shared personal tragedy.

John’s expression turned sober. Then he shook himself out of it. “Good point. Now come on - let’s clear a space for those scanners.”

Ten minutes later, they’d managed to clear off a space on their shared desk between their two computers so they could both reach a scanner easily. Chuck and Banks arrived with two scanners and an overflowing box on a push cart. Rodney helped Chuck connect the printers while John and Banks sorted the mugshot books from the box.

John distributed the mugshot books evenly, and after a test run to make sure everything was scanning right, Amelia and Chuck departed.

“Want some tunes?” John asked.

“More Johnny Cash? No thank you.”

John waggled his phone at Rodney. “I have some Rush on here.”

“That’s such a Canadian stereotype,” Rodney said.

“Hey,” John protested, offended. “It’s not like I suggested Celine Dion.”

Rodney made a face. “Point. Do you have any Diana Krall?”

“Jazz? Really?” But John unlocked his phone and put on soft music.

“She’s an excellent pianist,” Rodney said.

“What, you like pianists?” John made it sound lewd, waggled his eyebrows.

“You’re such a child. But yes - I do appreciate a talented pianist. Once upon a time I aspired to be one.”

“Oh yeah? I used to play guitar.”

John Sheppard was musical in addition to being a genius. Of course he was. Rodney resisted the urge to sigh like some regency heroine mooning over some rich, handsome, stuck-up but secretly nice hero. 

They fell into an easy rhythm, only pausing for coffee or bathroom breaks. Between them, they finished in three hours. Despite copious amounts of coffee, Rodney was exhausted. It took him three tries before he managed to pull on his jacket properly, and then he headed for the front door. Someone grabbed his shoulder. 

He turned. “Hey!”

It was John. “You’re in no state to drive.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Driving tired is the same as driving drunk.”

Before Rodney could protest further, John wrapped an arm around his waist, pulled him close. They were almost nose to nose. If one of them moved, they would be kissing. Rodney’s heart raced. Could John feel it?

“Who’s acting drunk now?” Rodney asked. 

John arched one eyebrow with that damnably sexy smirk of his. “Not me.” He stepped back. 

Rodney registered the jangling of keys a moment too late. “Hey! Give those back!”

John shook his head. 

“You - you picked my pocket!”

John twirled the keys around his finger, still smirking. “Oh come on. Every orphan learns to pick pockets. Haven’t you ever read  _ Oliver Twist?” _

Rodney frowned. “What?”

John pocketed Rodney’s keys with one hand and grabbed his wrist with the other. “Come on. I’m driving. We live together. We can come back for your car tomorrow.”

Rodney wanted to protest, but he was really tired. And John’s hand on his wrist was warm. And John was worried about his safety. John had bought him coffee and snacks and helped him even though he’d already done his assignment from Weir and could have gone home. Rodney let John open the passenger door of his ridiculous black muscle car, then watched as John slid into the driver’s seat. 

“Buckle up, buttercup.” John started the engine.

“That’s Princess Buttercup to you,” Rodney said, but he obeyed. He was more tired than he realized, because he always buckled his seatbelt first thing. 

“As you wish,” John drawled. He peeled out of the parking lot. 

Rodney yelped and grabbed the panic bar. “This is conduct unbecoming an officer of the law!”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got everything under control.”

John had to be as tired as Rodney was, if not more so. 

Rodney cleared his throat. “Hey. We both worked crazy late. Slow down. Better late than never. You know the rules.”

John glanced at him sidelong. “All right, fine. But I’m putting on some music.” He reached out and jabbed the radio. 

Johnny Cash filled the car.  _ Because you’re mine, I walk the line.  _

“Fine,” Rodney said. 

He fell asleep before they made it home. 

He didn’t know how he got there, but he woke up in his own bed the next morning feeling quite refreshed. The apartment was eerily quiet. Rodney squinted at his watch.

He cursed and leaped out of bed. “Carson! John! Did one of you disable my alarm clock?” He grabbed clean clothes out of the dresser and made a beeline for the bathroom. 

John, shirtless and gleaming from the shower, was leaning against the counter waiting for the coffee to finish percolating. “Relax. Weir said we could sleep in. Carson and Laura are down at the station already.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Rodney said, though he was mightily distracted by the scent of coffee. Or John.

“No, neither of us disabled your alarm clock. You slept through it.” John turned to the coffee maker and grabbed the pot, poured two mugs. He stirred a load of sugar into one and handed it to Rodney.

“How did Weir know to let us sleep in?”

“...Because I emailed her and gave her an update on our work on the case before we left the station? Like a detective is supposed to do.” John arched an eyebrow.

Right. Petty paperwork. Reporting in to the chain of command. Rodney had never been good at that, not as a student, not as a crime lab tech. He’d been good at maintaining chain of custody on evidence, but that was different. That was a point of professional pride. No one had ever been able to trip him up on the stand when he testified as an expert witness. He was a hell of an expert.

“Oh. Thanks. You reported in for both of us?” Rodney sipped the coffee. It was just how he liked it.

“We’re partners, aren’t we?” John drained his coffee mug in a couple of swallows, then headed back to his room. “Shower’s all yours.”

“You can go without me.”

“Can’t. We drove home together last night, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks again for that.”

“Wow. Two thanks in a day. The apocalypse is nigh,” John drawled.

Rodney glared at him. “I get that I’m abrasive and acerbic, but I’m not out to deliberately be rude.”

John offered him a ghost of a smile. “I know. Now hurry up and make yourself prettier. Weir’s patience won’t last forever, however genius our work was.”

Prettier. Did that mean John thought he was pretty as he was right then? Rodney hurried to grab some clean clothes and hop into the shower, avoiding John’s gaze in the hope that John wouldn’t see how he was blushing. Rodney wouldn’t object to the fact that John had said “however genius  _ our _ work was.” John was definitely a genius too. An unfairly hot one.

As soon as Rodney was out of the shower and dressed and ready for the day, he and John headed back to the station in John’s admittedly cool black muscle car. On the way into the station, John gave Rodney his keys back.

“Thanks,” Rodney said. He added, “You still picked my pocket.”

“Yeah, but you got home safe.” And then John headed for the conference room where the rest of the team was waiting.

Carson and Laura were helping Teyla assemble clues on the whiteboard - pictures of suspects and key evidence, strings connecting them to each other.

“What did you guys turn up?” Rodney asked.

“Nothing, unfortunately,” Carson said.

“Well, not about the case,” Laura said. “But I know all about what Carson was like as a med student.” She cast him a look and winked.

He rolled his eyes, but he was blushing. “What about you?” he asked John.

“Also nothing useful.”

“Has the facial recognition algorithm turned up anything?” Rodney asked. “We set it to run before we left last night.”

“Not yet,” Teyla said, grim.

“Have we searched wider?” John asked. “Than just mugshots. For the longest time, your big suspect in the murder case was Henry Wallace from Devlin Medical Tech because Amelia Monroe, after much persuasion, agreed to testify against Wallace in that massive medical malpractice and wrongful death case. What if it wasn’t him? Unless you think he hired out to a hit man with very memorable face tattoos.”

Weir eyed him. “What are you suggesting?”

“That we widen the net. Look beyond Wallace and Devlin MedTech,” John said. 

“Just look for...anyone and everyone with a face tattoo?” Weir asked.

John nodded. 

Weir narrowed her eyes. “You think I’ve had too narrow a focus on this case? After ten years -”

“Wallace was a genius,” John said. “He wouldn’t be stupid enough to hire a hitman who was memorable, like a guy with face tattoos.”

Teyla said, “It would not hurt to try looking wider. Perhaps Wallace was not silly enough to hire a man who would be recognizable, but if he had delegated the hiring of a killer through several levels so as to distance himself, perhaps someone else, a very tangential connection, made that mistake.”

“Given that face tattoos are so memorable,” Laura said, “maybe it’s someone who’s managed to avoid law enforcement all this time.”

Rodney sighed. “Then our mugshot crawl, virtual though it may be, is pointless.”

“But the algorithm was updated to be better at detecting face tattoos,” Carson said. “So instead of just limiting it to mugshots, have it crawl the entire database for all the photos and video footage we’ve ever collected for all of our cases. And not just our cases, but every case archived in the digital database.”

“This case is ten years old,” Weir said. “Do you think it’ll work?” She looked at Rodney.

“It’ll work to the extent that it’s limited by cases that haven’t been digitized,” he said.

John said, “Let’s talk to Chuck and Amelia and get scanning then, shall we?” He rose, pushed up his sleeves, and strode out of the room.

“Sheppard,” Weir began.

Teyla said, “He is not wrong. We can all help.”

“You have that conference tomorrow,” Laura said. “We can work on this while you’re gone.”

Weir sighed. But she nodded. “Okay.”

“Just be glad John’s as invested in this case as you are,” Rodney said. “I need to make a few quick changes to the algorithm, but then we can get started. Tell Chuck and Amelia we’ll need more than two scanners.”

After that, they split up to get work done.

O’Neill thought it was a fool’s errand, for five detectives to be scanning in old case files from ten years ago. Rodney had to admit, the five of them surrounded by teetering piles of yellowing paper looked foolish, but the scanners were flashing and the computers were humming and it was relatively quiet. If a call came in, they’d take it, but till then -

Till then they would work fast and efficient and hope they found something.

“A cold case seems like a fool’s errand,” Rodney admitted when they broke for lunch at Charin’s diner. “But we have to try our best. Weir got a new lead, so we’ll run it down all the way.”

“I’m sure this case isn’t cold to whoever Amelia Monroe left behind,” Laura said.

Carson nodded. “Do you think her son is still alive? He was fifteen when he went missing.”

Laura sighed. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t make it. If he was a witness to her murder, whoever killed her probably found him and silenced him too.”

“He might have survived,” Rodney said. “I mean, when I was fifteen I was literally supporting myself and my younger sister, because my parents were incompetent at everything they did, and I don’t just mean compared to mine and Jeannie’s genius.”

“Not everyone is as smart as you, as you’re so fond of reminding us,” Laura said.

Rodney glanced at John. Did the others know he was a genius too?

John said nothing, focused on his food.

Teyla said, “Even if Amelia’s son did not survive, we should not give up on this case. He, too, deserves justice.”

*

Once again, it was John and Rodney who ended up staying late after everyone else was gone.

“Why is it always us?” Rodney asked. He handed John a mug of coffee, since it had been his turn to get them refills from the cafe down the street.

“Because we have no lives outside work.” John nodded at him in thanks, sipped some of the coffee.

“Teyla needing to go home to her husband and son I get,” Rodney said. “But Laura and Carson -”

“Laura volunteers with a youth group for teenage girls who are abuse survivors. She’s their running coach. It’s called Girls on the Run or something. And Carson volunteers at a medical clinic in a low-income area. Even if they’re not doing what we’re doing, they’re still helping.” 

“Oh,” Rodney said. Then he eyed John. “How come you know that and I don’t? You never used to socialize with them.”

“You’re a genius at things, I’m a genius at -”

“Math, not people.” Rodney set to work carefully disassembling an old case file.

He and John had commandeered one of the fancy printer-copier-scanners since no one else was using it this late at night, so instead of having to scan one page at a time they could scan an entire file.

“I’m still better at people than you are,” John said.

“Whatever. You  _ never _ notice when someone’s hitting on you,” Rodney said, because even Laura and Carson had caught on to the way women’s heads turned when John entered a room, and they weren’t afraid to leverage John’s good looks to get a witness to open up. John, the idiot, thought people were just friendly because he didn’t seem like a cop.

“You have a point,” John said. “I really never see it coming.”

Which drove Rodney crazy. While he was still convinced that the way John kissed him couldn’t have been just for work, he wasn’t brave enough to try brazenly hitting on John. Not that John would notice. Rodney knew he wasn’t that people-savvy, but he had no idea how to try to get John to even look at him like he was something more than a partner.

“Hey, what are you two doing here so late?” Samantha Carter, O’Neill’s second-in-command in Missing Persons, came to stand beside the mess that was disassembled case files on their desk.

“Scanning in old case files so they can be accessed digitally,” John said.

Carter arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t that something Records should be doing?”

“Well, they’re backlogged, and this isn’t a priority, but we’re helping Weir with a cold case, and so we’re trying everything we possibly can,” Rodney said.

“Right. The Amelia Monroe murder case. Have you looked through the missing persons file for her son at all?” Carter asked. “Since O’Neill helped with that case back in the day.”

“Weir brought in boxes and boxes of old files she kept on the case,” Rodney said. “Even if John and I haven’t looked through it, I’m sure one of the others has.”

“I looked through it,” John said.

Rodney shot him a look, surprised.

“He disappeared pretty thoroughly,” John said. 

“Laura thinks he’s dead,” Rodney added.

Carter nodded, expression grim. “The likelihood is pretty high. He was a smart kid, though. Bit of a loner. Probably more resourceful than the average teenager, or so O’Neill says. We can always hope, right?”

“Hope,” John agreed.

“But I didn’t just come here to shoot the breeze.” Carter held out a box. “Here. A gift from above. Buttonhole cameras with built-in mobile data transmitters and also GPS trackers, in case a kidnapper takes your phones. Since your team is cursed.”

“We are not cursed,” Rodney protested, but he pounced on the box.

Carter grinned. “I know. Curses are irrational. But you know how cops are. Like soldiers. Superstitious. Have fun!” She waved and headed back to her own bullpen.

Rodney opened the box and found six cameras and six transmitters, plus a charging dock for all of them, and instructions on the mobile app to download on their phones to control the devices, plus how to set up accounts online. “This is high-end stuff. We should get it set up.”

“Later,” John said, still disassembling files for scanning.

“You know,” Rodney said, setting up the charging station, “at first I thought you were pretty lackadaisical about being a detective. But you’re really, really intense.”

“I care about our cases too,” John murmured to himself. 

“I became a detective because I felt like I wasn’t really helping in the crime lab,” Rodney said. “And it was kind of mindless work. Sure, I did more complex and unique analyses than just running the GCMS over and over again, but - I felt like it wasn’t enough.”

“How do you feel now?” John asked. 

“Being a detective has reaffirmed my opinion that the crime lab is pathetically understaffed and overworked. And I appreciate what the lab contributes to cases. But I do also feel like I am doing more as a detective. More to help.” Rodney watched the blinking lights on the charging station. “What about you?”

“What about what about me?” John finished scanning a file, set it aside, and put the next file into the scanner. Then he reassembled the file he’d just scanned. 

“Why did you become a detective?”

“To protect and serve, obviously.”

Rodney snorted. “Don’t be flippant with me. I really want to know.”

John looked at him. “Really?”

“I just said I did.”

John considered for a moment, but then his brow furrowed, and he squinted at one of the pages of the case file he was reassembling. 

“John?” Rodney asked. 

“Sorry. I was distracted for a moment.” John looked up at him. 

“So, why did you become a detective?”

“Because,” John said, “I want to find the man who murdered my mother.” He tore one of the pages out of the file, grabbed his jacket, stood up, and strode out of the bullpen. 

Rodney watched him go, confused. “What? John - wait!”

But John moved fast. 

Rodney grabbed the file John had been looking at. And he saw a grainy photocopy of a surveillance photo. It was of a younger Acastus Kolya of the Genii talking to a man in a black trench coat. The man had white cornrows and some kind of black tribal emblem tattooed on his face. 

Rodney frowned. “What the hell, John? This is an important lead. We should call Weir.” He scooped up his phone and called John. It went straight to voicemail. Why would John just  _ go  _ like that when he knew everyone on the team had been looking for a break on this case?

And then he was out of his chair like a shot. “Carter!” He dashed for the Missing Persons bullpen. 

“Yeah?”

“Let me see the file on Amelia Monroe’s missing son.”

Carter nodded. “Sure. Why?”

“What was his name?”

“John. John Monroe.”

“Dammit.”

*

“This entire thing is John Sheppard’s fault,” Rodney said. “Turn left here.” He was leaning up between the front seats, navigating with his phone while Laura drove and Carson called Weir and Teyla over and over and over. 

“How could Weir not have recognized him?” Carson fretted. 

Laura spun the wheel and made a sharp turn. “It’s been ten years. People change a lot in ten years.”

“Why didn’t John trust Weir, though?” Carson asked. He sighed and tapped at his phone. “No answer. I’m calling O’Neill.”

“It’s obvious why he didn’t trust her,” Rodney said. “He blames her for his mother dying.”

“How could you say that?” Carson asked, aghast.

“Left there.” Rodney pointed.

Laura jerked the wheel again, making all of them tilt. “Didn’t you hear how John talked about his mother? He said she agreed to testify against Henry Wallace  _ after much persuasion. _ It was Weir who convinced her to testify. If she was killed so she couldn’t testify, well, I could see how John blamed Weir for her death. If Weir hadn’t pushed her to testify, she’d still be alive.”

“How could John think that?” Carson asked. “As a detective, surely he knows what it’s like with witnesses.”

Rodney shook his head. “He doesn’t think like a detective when it comes to his mother’s death. He thinks like a fifteen-year-old boy who watched his mother die.”

Carson winced. “Right.”

Laura turned.

“No!” Rodney snapped. “The next right.”

“But Carson said -”

“I’m navigating, not him.” Rodney cursed and waited for the phone to recalculate the route. “Okay, take the next left.” 

The little cursor on his phone map app was still blinking, which hopefully meant John’s phone was still on and his location was accurate. 

“There, there!” Rodney pointed to what was a terribly cliche abandoned-looking warehouse.

Laura nodded. “Roger that.” And she drove right past it.

“What are you doing?” Rodney cried.

“I’m not going to park right in front of it and make it obvious we’re cops,” Laura said. “I’m going to park somewhere close enough we can reach the car in an emergency but that won’t be readily observable to whoever’s already there. John may not be alone. If other Genii are there -”

“They’ll recognize me,” Rodney said.

“Only as John’s boyfriend,” Laura said. “You’ll have the element of surprise.”

“Unless John totally lost his mind and did the hero-version of a villain monologue and told them we were only undercover dating,” Rodney said.

“John  _ has _ lost his mind.” Laura turned another corner and managed to wedge the car in between two rusty pick-ups in a feat of parallel parking that Rodney was sure had never been previously attempted.

“O’Neill,” Carson said. “We have a problem. You know the Amelia Monroe case? Oh, Carter told you? Well, we’ve located Sheppard and we probably need backup before he does something spectacularly stupid and gets himself killed.”

Carson yanked the phone away from his ear as shouting erupted from it. Then he said, “Sending coordinates now. If someone could get ahold of Teyla, that would be great. I’ve got to go, now.” And he hung up.

“Everyone, get your earpieces in,” Rodney said. “We’ll split up and case the place. Whoever sees Sheppard first -”

“Cuff his ass and drag him back to the station?” Laura asked.

“Not what I would have said, but - yes.” Rodney handed out earwigs, the buttonhole cameras, and the GPS trackers. He kept a spare set for himself.

Carson nodded. “All right. Should we synchronize watches?”

Laura stared at him. Then she shoved his kevlar vest at him, and they got suited up. At the Academy, handling firearms had been the most nervewracking part for Rodney. When they practiced hand-to-hand, that had been scary enough, knowing that he would be putting himself in physical peril for his job. Scarier still had been being handed an instrument that had one function - harm - and being told he had to learn to decide for himself when he should inflict potentially lethal harm on another human being. The thought of taking a life was far more frightening than the thought of losing his own.

For the longest time, Rodney had thought that second to taking a life, losing his own was the scariest thing he could face. And then he’d been faced with the possibility of losing John.

John, who brought him coffee and citrus-free snacks in the middle of the night. John, who was a low-key genius who always used his gift to help. John, who was part of Rodney’s morning every morning. John, who was Rodney’s partner. John, who kissed like a dream. John, who Rodney trusted with his life.

No. Rodney shook his head to clear it. He had to be calm and level-headed before he went into a situation where he might have to draw his sidearm. He had to have his partner’s back, even if his partner was being highly irrational right now. 

There was a certain zen to the ritual of arming up to storm a building. First, the kevlar vest, straps secure and snug but not so tight that they made it hard to breathe. Then the handcuffs on his belt. Then the little leather credentials wallet. Then the taser. Then the spare magazines. And finally the pistol at his hip. Once its weight was settled, Rodney closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Then he opened his eyes. “Ready?” he asked.

“Soundcheck,” Laura said.

Rodney nodded. All three of them checked that their earwigs were connected, that they could hear each other. They set their phones to silent in case O’Neill or Teyla or Weir got back to them, and they split up.

Laura headed for the back of the warehouse, because she was the fastest. Carson went left. Rodney went right. They’d circle, clear the perimeter, then infiltrate. Rodney kept one hand on his pistol grip, another hand on his flashlight, but there was no need to turn it on, not yet, because the warehouse was lit from the inside. There were multiple doors along all the walls of the building, and a couple of them had windows in them. Rodney kept to the shadows, wary of any guards, but there were none, so he headed closer to the building.

He tapped the button on his earwig. “I’m in position.” He eased forward and peered through the window, which was grimy.

“Roger,” Laura said. “I’m in position.”

“Roger,” Carson said. “I’m in position.”

“Got a twenty on Sheppard?” Rodney asked. Through the grimy window, he had a view on some kind of abandoned storage room. The flickering fluorescent lights cast shadows on half-collapsed shelving, a dusty floor, and several rat corpses.

“Negative,” Laura said. 

Carson said, “Negative on Sheppard, but I’ve got a twenty on - bloody buggering hell, it’s Sora Tyrus.”

“We knew the Genii were involved with this,” Rodney said. “Who else do you see?”

“Detective McKay,” someone said.

Rodney spun around, startled.

Someone punched him in the stomach.

He doubled over, gasping.

Someone else yanked a black bag over his head, and hands closed over his arms and legs. He struggled and tried to shout, but another hand clamped over his face, smothering him with the fabric of the bag, and he panicked. His world tilted as he was hoisted off the ground and carried. He landed painfully on his shoulder and side a few moments later, and then he heard the slide and slam of van doors, heard an engine purr to life, and he was jolted into motion.

Rodney tried to tilt his ear to his shoulder so he could activate his earwig, but it was no use. He shouted for Laura and Carson. Someone booted him in the ribs. He curled in on himself reflexively, winded, his ribs ablaze with pain. He couldn’t hear Carson and Laura in the van with him. Maybe they’d gotten away. They could track him. He had two trackers on him. If his captors took one, he’d have the other. He tried to track how many turns the van took, but he was dizzy with pain and lack of oxygen.

The van shuddered to a halt, and there were more hands on him, hauling him to his feet. He was poked and prodded and shoved till he stumbled forward, hands out for balance. He went down a few steps - his footfalls echoed oddly; the floor was hard - cement? - and then someone shoved him once more, and he landed on his knees. 

The black bag was whisked off of his head. Rodney glimpsed a cement basement, of men and women clad in dark suits before he was patted down and summarily disarmed. One of his captors took his earwig and smashed it. Another stomped on his cellphone.

“Hey! That’s government property!” were the first words out of Rodney’s mouth, because when he got scared he turned into a smartass.

One of his captors backhanded him sharply.

“Leave him alone!” John shouted.

Rodney’s head was spinning, but he tried to crane his neck, search for John in the crowd of strangers.

Not just strangers.

Acastus Kolya. Cassel Massan. Sora Tyrus. Dahlia Radim. Heiron. Valeron. Lanko. Idos. Faces Rodney recognized from the time he and John had done recon at that restaurant.

John was on his knees flanked by Sora and Lanko. His clothes were disheveled and his face was bruised and there was blood at his temple. Sora and Lanko were armed.

Kolya was sitting on a cheap folding metal chair opposite John, flanked by more of his Genii associates, like a king holding court.

_ Please find me, _ Rodney thought.

“This has nothing to do with Rodney,” John said. “You wanted me, you found me. Let him go.”

Kolya tilted his head, studying John, amused. “For ten years I assumed you were dead in a gutter, but you survived. I almost admire your resourcefulness in making it this far, but clearly your intelligence only gets you so far, because you walked right into my hands, and now I can finish what I started with your mother a decade ago.”

John swallowed hard.

Rodney’s heart pounded in his ears.

“You were right there, weren’t you? While I killed your mother. I literally had her life in my hands, and you hid like a coward and watched me snuff her out.” Kolya smiled.

John’s face was pale, his expression perfectly blank.

Kolya cocked his head, considered John for a long moment. His expression turned mocking. “I suppose it would only be poetic, then, for you to stay there, helpless like a child, while I kill your boyfriend.”

So Kolya didn’t know Rodney was John’s partner on the force and nothing more. Or did he think Rodney was both? Rodney’s mind was spinning with the possibilities, because that was better than panicking about the possibilities of his own impending death.

John smiled then, but the expression was horribly wrong, was angry and twisted instead of sweet or humorous or sarcastic. “I have a deal for you. You let Rodney go, and I’ll kill myself.”

“What the hell?” Rodney stared at him, horrified.

Kolya threw his head back and laughed. “You know I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.”

“Except you didn’t, ten years ago, did you? You hired one of the Wraith to make the hit,” John said. “And you haven’t made a kill since. If I kill myself, no one will look further, and certainy not for you.”

“Your boyfriend will know,” Kolya said.

John glanced at Rodney only briefly, but their gazes met long enough. “He won’t tell. He’s not stupid.”

Rodney burst out with,  _ “You’re  _ stupid, John. Don’t do it!”

But Kolya still looked amused. “How do you know I won’t kill him after you kill yourself?”

“Because,” John said, “you want to see me do it, don’t you? So let him go. Get a show unlike any other.”

Rodney’s chest tightened. “John -”

Sora unholstered her pistol and held it out.

John took it. He cocked it and pressed the end of the barrel to his own temple.

Rodney couldn’t breathe.

Kolya stared at John. John stared right back at him.

“All right.” Kolya waved a dismissive hand. “Take his boyfriend, blindfold him, and leave him downtown.”

Two men grabbed Rodney’s arms and hauled him to his feet.

Rodney struggled in their grip. “Wait!”

John said, “Go. Before he changes his mind.”

Rodney looked at Kolya. “At least let me say goodbye.” His heart roared in his ears. He could barely hear his own voice.

“Sure,” Kolya said, still terribly amused. “Say your farewells. Make it extra touching.”

Rodney broke free from his captors and sank to his knees in front of John. He reached up, framed John’s face in his hands. “Don’t do this. Please.”

“You have to live,” John said in a low voice. “You’re smarter than me. You’re better than me. They need you more than they need me -”

_ “I _ need you.” It was true. It had been true for a long time but only now could Rodney say it. He was a coward. He could only be honest when things were desperate. 

“Rodney -”

“I love you.”

John’s eyes went wide.

Rodney grabbed his collar and hauled him in for a kiss. It was fast and messy and desperate, roaming hands and twining tongues. Rodney’s heart was pounding. For one moment he felt the cold steel of the gun John was holding. Rodney clung to him and hoped John understood what he was trying to do, trying to say.

“That’s touching,” Kolya said, all sarcasm.

Rodney pulled back. He smoothed a hand over John’s perpetually-messy hair, straightened his collar, smoothed down his shirt. He never looked away from John. “I mean it. I love you. Don’t leave me.”

John’s eyes were wide. “I - I love you too.”

Something in Rodney’s chest fractured. Oh hell. John  _ meant _ it. John was about to die, but he meant it.

“I think I fell in love with you the first day we met,” John whispered. “And I couldn’t stop thinking about the first time we kissed. I’m sorry -”

Rough hands closed around Rodney’s arms and yanked him back to his feet.

He struggled.  _ “John!” _

That black bag closed over his head, and he could hear Kolya and Sora and the other Genii laughing as he was hauled back up the steps and thrown into the van once more.

The Genii were stupid. The Genii hadn’t patted him down thoroughly. The Genii hadn’t seen him put the buttonhole came on John’s collar, drop the GPS tracker into his pocket. Rodney didn’t believe in any deities, so he didn’t believe in prayer. But he did lay there and beg the universe, over and over and over again, for his gamble to work. 

It had to work. He loved John. John loved him back. 

_ Please, _ Rodney begged.  _ Please. _

But he was a genius. He could beg and work at the same time. The Genii hadn’t bound Rodney’s wrists either, so he could reach into his own pocket and activate his own tracker. He would have to trust that his teammates would track him and John at the same time.

_ Please, _ Rodney begged the universe, begged his teammates.  _ Please get to John before he sacrifices himself for me. Please find John. And then find me. _

Either moments later or an eternity later, the van stopped, and the sliding side door roared open. Rough hands hauled Rodney up, and then he landed on hard pavement.

Cries went up around him as he staggered to his feet, yanked the black bag off his head. He spun and watched the black van squeal away. He committed the license plate to memory, and then he reached out and grabbed the nearest passerby by the shoulder.

It was a college-age boy. “Hey!” He swatted Rodney’s hand aside.

Rodney said, “I’m a detective with the Colorado Springs PD. I need to borrow your phone.”

The boy eyed him.

Rodney said, “Now! A man’s life is at stake.”

“Where’s your gold shield thingie?”

“It was taken by the people who kidnapped me and still have my partner and are threatening to kill him, so give me your phone!”

The boy flinched at Rodney’s tone. He reached into his pocket. “Here. Jeez. Calm down.”

Rodney snatched it from him and dialed 911. A moment later, someone plucked the phone out of his hand and gave it back to the boy.

“That’s not necessary,” O’Neill said. He, Carter, Jackson, and Murray were standing on the sidewalk beside him. Two squad cars were parked on the curb.

“They have John,” Rodney said.

“Weir and the rest of your team are on it,” Jackson said. “Sam saw as soon as two of your trackers went live.”

“Not just the trackers,” Rodney said. “I managed to plant a buttonhole cam on John and activate it before they separated us. Get me a laptop.” His heart was pounding.

_ Please. Please. Please. _

Carter steered him toward one of the squad cars, which had a laptop in it. Rodney logged into the team account he’d made to consolidate all the streams from any of the buttonhole cams. His hands shook as he found the one live stream and made it full-screen. O’Neill and the rest of his team crowded around him to watch.

As Kolya was gleefully telling John to do it, to pull the trigger, to finally end his waste of a life. Ten years plotting his vengeance, and he’d utterly failed.

“What does he mean, pull the trigger?” Jackson asked.

“He said - he said he’d kill himself if they let me go.” Rodney stared at the screen, numb.  _ Please. Please. _

_ “What?” _ O’Neill demanded.

And then Weir shouted, “Drop your weapons! You’re surrounded!”

There was a gunshot.

Rodney didn’t know what happened after that, because he passed out.

Briefly.

What followed was a blur of shouting and hands on him. When he regained lucidity, he was propped up in the back seat of the squad car while O’Neill was on the radio, coordinating with dispatch to get backup to Weir’s location to help secure the arrestees. 

“He’s awake now,” Jackson was saying to someone on his phone.

“Put him on,” Carson said, voice tinny from Jackson’s phone speaker.

Jackson held the phone out to Rodney. “It’s Dr. Beckett.”

“Rodney,” Carson said. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“Daniel says you swooned.”

“I did not  _ swoon,” _ Rodney snapped.

“Fainted, then.”

“I also did not  _ faint. _ I  _ passed out. _ I’m sure it was an adrenaline crash or something.”

“Well, you’re arguing with me, so I do know that you’re all right.” Carson chuckled. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

The gunshot. Rodney grabbed the phone from Jackson. “How’s John?”

“He’s fine,” Carson said. “A bit knocked around but otherwise none the worse for the wear. I checked him over in lieu of the paramedics taking him.”

“And Kolya?”

“Injured but not dead,” Laura chimed in, her voice slightly muffled. “John shot him.”

“Where are you guys now?” Rodney asked.

“On our way back to the station. See you there,” Carson said, and the call ended.

Rodney handed back Jackson’s cellphone. “Take me back to the station. Now.”

Jackson glanced over his shoulder at O’Neill, who was still on the radio. Something unspoken passed between them, and Jackson said, “Sure. We can spare a squad car.” He called out to his other teammates. “Sam, Teal’c, I’m taking Rodney back to the station. You riding with?”

“I will remain with O’Neill,” Teal’c said.

Carter jogged over to them. “I’ll ride along.”

Jackson handed her the keys. “Let’s go.”

The entire way back to the station, Rodney was anxious. He needed to get a new cellphone, and he needed to get all his old contacts uploaded onto it. He needed to program John back onto speed dial. He needed to be able to hear John’s voice whenever he wanted, to make sure he was safe. He needed to be able to  _ see _ John. He -

Carter pulled into the parking lot. Rodney had the door open before she cut the engine, and then he was up the steps and into the bullpen and scanning the crowd - it was crowded, with Genii clad in cheap suits and patrolmen helping with the mass booking, and -

There. Beside Weir’s desk. Rodney called out.

“John!”

Heads turned.

Rodney stormed toward him. People scattered from his path.

John was perched on the edge of Weir’s desk, talking to Carson and Laura.

Rodney planted himself in front of John. His heart was racing. “You are a total  _ idiot. _ You offered to  _ shoot yourself in the head _ so I could live? In what universe is that a good idea?”

John said, “I’m glad you’re okay too.”

Rodney sucked in a deep breath, because his chest was tight and his heart was racing even faster. “Why would you do that?”

“Because,” John said, “you’re my partner.” He caught Rodney’s gaze and held it. “It’s my job to protect you.”

“You’re not supposed to die on me. You’re not supposed to leave me alone. Remember what happened after the Katie Brown case? How mad you were that I was gone? If you’d pulled that trigger on yourself I’d have been exponentially madder,” Rodney said. He was gaining steam.  _ “Exponentially. _ Avogadro exponentially.”

Laura whistled appreciatively. 

Rodney glanced at her.

“What?” she said. “I took chemistry.”

John said, “Rodney, I -”

“You were an idiot. For a genius, you were a total idiot,” Rodney snapped, and he felt like he was going to shake apart.

“Rodney,” John said again, and Rodney looked at him.

“What?”

“I wanted to say thank you,” John said. “For being a genius even when I was being an idiot. You saved my life.”

Rodney was drowning in John’s green, green gaze. “You’re welcome.”

John leaned in and kissed him.

The rest of the world fell away, and all Rodney knew was John’s soft, warm lips against his, the firmness of his chest, strong arms wrapping around him.

When they finally broke apart, Rodney’s heart was no longer racing, and he felt calm and warm and grounded.

“I thought they were just pretending to date,” one of the Genii said. He was sitting at a nearby desk while a frazzled sergeant fingerprinted him.

“Me too,” Carson said, sounding dazed.

“Gentlemen,” Weir said. “And ladies.” 

Teyla stood beside her.

“Before I say  _ good job, _ we have a lot to talk about,” Weir said. “Starting with the part where John Monroe Sheppard should have had no part in this investigation and ending with the part where Rodney McKay lost government property.”

“A Genii goon stomped on my phone and earwig,” Rodney protested.

John said, “Can you give us twenty-four hours? You know witnesses have better memories after at least two sleep cycles.”

Weir eyed him, but he wasn’t wrong. “Fine. Twenty-four hours.”

“Good. I can go visit my mother’s grave.”

Weir’s expression softened.

John reached out, curled his hand around Rodney’s wrist. “And we can go out on our first real date.”

**Author's Note:**

> So much gratitude to my girl S for her beta assistance and help with coming up with a title and, most importantly, her awesome McShep playlist on Spotify because I could not have written this story without it.
> 
> This is a fusion with the TV show You're All Surrounded. Pretty much if you read this the entire show will have been spoiled.
> 
> Title from the song Run Baby Run by The Rigs (which is one of my go-to McShep songs because of randommindtime's awesome fanvid).


End file.
